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Corrik wrote:

Excaliburproxy wrote:

Deadmanwalking wrote:

Could you possibly be more specific and give some actual examples?

See, I'm trying to come up with non-social examples of this that players would find unpleasant and detrimental to their game experience and failing. Which means I'd be really happy if you could provide an example so I know we're on the same page as discussion goes forward, and we can have a productive discussion of how to avoid that issue in PF2.

"Just cuz I can fly a plane, doesn't mean that I can fly a helicopter."

"Just because I am a biologist doesn't mean that I can perform first aide well"

etc. etc.

For my part, I think broad competency in many related fields is a perfectly acceptable fantasy/superhero trope. Even if it does not fit every narrative that people want, I think the collapsed skills is a good game mechanic.

Starfinder is horrible about this. The Life Science skill includes: BioEngineering, biology, botany, ecology, genetics, xenobiology, zoology, and other fields of biological science. Physical Science includes: Astronomy, chemistry, climatology, geography, geology, hyperspace, meteorology, oceanography, physics, and other fields of natural science. Those are hugely different and specific skill sets. Knowledge of astronomy doesn't have a lot of crossover with oceanography. Each one should be a different knowledge skill. The idea that putting a single skill rank makes you knowledgeable in all those things is more unbelievable than magic.

I disagree.

Like Excaliburproxy said, it’s a trope, and one that seems perfectly appropriate for the kind of light, bouncy science fantasy story Starfinder is interested in telling.

If Starfinder were trying to be super realistic “hard” sci-fi game, then sure, it might make sense to split out the science skills.

It being a trope doesn't really make it better. Especially when your entire party of smuggler archaeologists are all experts in all known sciences on top of being expert hackers and engineers.

At first Legendary Disguise annoyed me cause it looked like it did nothing, then I looked at the top left hand corner. Three Actions to make a disguise. That's solid, amazing even.

I had the same reaction.

Coup de grâce in its sleep.

Of course you're going to face tougher challenges as you level up. You'd get pretty bored if you kept facing the same old challenges...

And if the challenges scale to your level, then in effect the DC does.

Seth wrote:

How about: The rules are not a physics simulator. NPC stats only exist so that they may interact with PCs. When not interacting with PCs an NPCs stats don't matter, and thus do what the story needs them to do.

Some people, myself included, find this deeply dramatically unsatisfying. We want the world to make sense with the stats as given and it's a better game for us if that's the case.

Since you seem not to care about that (which is fine), this thread is really not intended for you and you won't get much out of it, but many people do care about this sort of thing.

Yeah no kidding. Wraithstrike thinks that the syringe spear and Adhesive Blood don't interact because the syringe spear doesn't specifically state that it can push air. You know, like a syringe does.

While it shouldn't just be hand waved away, the rules are not a physics simulator, and they will break down upon close inspection. The only way to avoid that would be balloon the CRB to thousands of pages long as to include biology, physics, economy, etc text books.

For example, the 1E CRB does not include any actual rules for breathing. It has rules for what happens if you don't breath, but not what combination of gases you need, how much you need, the apparatus for breathing, how different levels of gases effect your physical abilities, etc. There are rules for what happens if you don't eat, but no specific rules on the mechanics of eating, or how to poop for that matter.

Mats Öhrman wrote:

If you do "chains" of skill rolls, you really do want to be good enough that some parts of the chain are auto-successes, or you will have really low probability of doing the full chain.

A very simple example: "I jump over the fence, sneak over the lawn, climb up the wall and listen at the window." That means a jump roll, a stealth roll, a climb roll and a listen roll - and if you fail at either one of these four, you fail to listen in at the secret meeting taking place behind said window.

Lets say you are not good enough to auto-succeed on any of these rolls. For simplicity's sake say that you succeed on a 5+ on all of them - i.e. an 80% chance. Well, then the chance of succeeding at the whole chain is 0.8^4, which is a 40% chance - not very good odds if failing is of any consequence.

Let's add the three rolls needed to make the trip back to the starting point. That means a jump roll, a stealth roll, a climb roll, a listen roll, a climb roll, a stealth roll and a jump roll. The odds of succeeding at 7 rolls in a row, each one at 80%, is a dismal 21%...

The group I play in tends to use skills *a lot*, especially when you do some kind of heist or intrigue play, and these kinds of chains show up all the time.

I have not seen anything about handling chained skill rolls like these so far in PF2. In PF1 we've handled it by simple being good enough to auto-succeed at select skills. (Remember that a 1 is *not* a fail or fumble at skill-rolls in PF1!)

They have also promised that DC don't scale based on level, even as our proficiency does. Meaning if jumping this was DC 10 at level 1, the same fence will still be DC 10 at level 20.

So you will reach points where there's pretty much no chance of failure on specific tasks, but it depends on how tough the task is. If you want to reach that point before level scaling gets you there, that seems to be what the Assurance feat is for.

But will that work in practice? Sure the DC to jump a fence or break the simple wooden door may not change, but will we still deal with those challenges? In my experience, the jump lengths get longer and the doors worth opening get made of more adamantine.

Seems like we'd rarely see magic armor and weapons with such a system.

Wasn't the concern that dice rolls are too important?

I'd definitely like some sort of way to determine if you are out classed. Having a monster too strong to fight goes against most everything the game teaches you, and there really isn't a way to tell a challenging fight from an impossible fight. And with an average combat time of 3 rounds, you don't exactly have a lot of time to figure out one from the other before it's too late.

Applying a bonus to making a diplomacy check in a native language feels like a better approach. After all, common is the native language for many people. Certainly the rules can do some things to make language more important, but unfortunately most of that comes down to DM and adventure design. If everything speaks common, you never need to translate giant runes or some such, and the adventure doesn't have you travel much, then the other languages simply aren't needed for that campaign. Having bonuses or penalties won't do much to change that.

Monk needs to be even more Weeaboo Fightan Magic. Having a number of supernatural abilities to spend Spell or Ki points on would help to give an identity beyond unarmed fighter.

Even if there are class specific archetypes, they will still mostly be a bucket of feats. Saga Edition had a similar concept with their feat and talent system. Even the core classes felt like little more than a way to divide up talents.

Some way to limit spell access. Ever expanding spell lists are a huge part of the problem for Vancian casting. Also, G only paladins and no goblin pcs in core.